


Scenes From a Not-So-Clandestine Romance

by MasterOfAllImagination



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M, Seriously don't even read this, so much fluff it's sickening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 04:44:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3161657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterOfAllImagination/pseuds/MasterOfAllImagination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the relationship between Bard and Thranduil grows beyond merely that of two allies, they become proportionately blind to how obvious their displays of affection are to their people. Pretty soon their feelings are an open secret shared among everyone in Mirkwood and Dale-- except the kings themselves.  </p>
<p>(or, five times someone caught Bard and Thranduil secretly kissing, and the one time they did it in public)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scenes From a Not-So-Clandestine Romance

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [ this exchange ](http://cutlerbeckettt.tumblr.com/post/107763216995/barduiltrash-headcanon-barduiltrash) on tumblr between myself and [ barduiltrash](http://barduiltrash.tumblr.com/).

5.

Bard collects his children like a checklist, and as a tick mark he gives each of them a kiss on the top of the head-- Bain, safe, kiss; Tilda, safe, kiss; Sigrid, safe, kiss.  Then he leaves them with a woman who had been their neighbour in Laketown-that-was and walks through Dale, surveying the carnage, searching for and extracting the wounded from the indiscriminate jumble of appendages and blood. 

This search, too, he conducts like a checklist, but with different terms: first he checks for elven armor, and then he checks for white-gold hair.  If he finds neither of these a little bit of the tightness in his chest vanishes with the knowledge that the chances of Thranduil’s survival are incrementally ticking upward.

The sound of a piece of rubble being overturned startles him from behind.  He whirls and catches the sight of blonde hair and grey armor, and his heart nearly falls out of him before he realizes that it is not a body he looks upon but a whole, hale, and _breathing_ elf.  With careful placement of his boots between the bodies of fallen allies and enemies alike, Bard swiftly strides across the courtyard to Thranduil, who is blood-spattered and pale but most certainly _alive_.

“My lord Thranduil,” Bard says, half believing that the man before him is naught but a phantom conjured by his tired and battle-battered mind.

“Master Dragonslayer,” Thranduil returns.  Bard almost feels the deep notes of his voice rumble through him, and he knows now that he is, indeed, real.  His relief is such that he closes the last distance between himself and the Elvenking and puts a hand behind his neck, pulling him forward so that he can place dry and blood-caked lips to Thranduil’s forehead. 

“Thank the heavens,” he mutters, hardly aware of the Elvenking’s reaction, nor even of his own movements in the haze of his gladness. 

A bowman whom he had commanded during the battle calls his name from across the square.  As easily as he had come Bard steps away and advances towards the bowman, hurrying onto the next item in need of attention on his mental list. 

But he does not fail to turn back to the Elvenking and raise a hand to say goodbye.  He is as he left him, standing straight and pale in the midst of the courtyard, seemingly unaffected by Bard’s impromptu kiss except for the incredulous hand which half rises to his forehead, and then redirects itself in a mirror of Bard’s farewell wave.

Bard arrives at the bowman’s side and kneels to examine the wounded man he has found.  The bowman looks over Bard’s bent back towards where Thranduil stands, then looks at Bard, and then back at Thranduil. 

He blinks twice, and wonders if he has _really_ just witnessed what he thinks he has witnessed.

“Bandages,” Bard snaps, and the bowman blinks for a third time and readjusts his focus to the wounded man in front of him.

But he’s almost _certain_ that he just saw the Dragonslayer kiss the Elvenking.

 

4. 

The parchment is an official invitation, surprisingly neat and formal for such a hurried affair from such a scattered, broken people.  And at long last it rests in his hands.

“My thanks,” Thranduil says to the messenger, and allows the guard who had brought the missive from Dale to leave the presence of his throne.  He opens the intricately folded envelope with infinite care, tearing nothing with his long, spindly fingers, and when it is open he lays it flat it upon his lap.  It is a formal request that he attend Bard’s coronation, an event which ironically both himself and that cursed Dain Ironfoot had staunchly recommended, despite the Dragonslayer’s demurrals.

He reads the stock platitudes quickly, used to verbose homages to the comings and goings of the dynasties of Men and Dwarves, his interest waning to such an extent as he almost does not read the letter through to the end.   The attention of his skimming eyes is luckily recaptured by a post-script, added in a spidery, hasty scrawl:

>   _Wear the emeralds.  I did not take them from Smaug’s hoard just to see them waste away in your own treasure collection.  --Bard_

The smallest twinge of a smile curves the left side of his mouth upwards.  As he picks up the letter to refold it, the faintest scent of resin-- like that which one might use to polish a bow-- reaches him.  He pauses.  He looks around at the two warriors that perpetually flank his throne and ensures that both of them face away from him.  And then he lifts the parchment carefully to his nose and inhales once, long and deep, before returning it to his lap and refolding it as neatly as it had been before 

If, perhaps, his lips had brushed rough paper and remembered the feel of Bard’s own mouth upon his forehead, that was his own secret.

Or so he thought.  For the messenger, a most troublesome and curious sort who had been many times in trouble with his commander for sneaking out of the bounds of the Woodland Realm against sanction, had remained just in view of Thranduil’s throne, insatiably curious about the contents of the strange envelope from the King of Dale and woefully ignorant of the rushed coronation.

A thousand theories begin to spin the wheels of his young brain.  The sight of his king riding out the next fortnight for Dale wearing the emeralds of Girion proudly upon his breast only adds fuel to the small but insatiable fire of speculation that now grows in his mind. 

 

3.

The coronation clothes are not his, though they are neither ill-fitting nor physically uncomfortable.  In front of a brass mirror he regards himself, his hair for once loosed from its ever-present and practical half-ponytail, bedecked in the most modest of the sumptuous regalia that had been found in the depths of the old city’s storerooms.

“You carry the garments of your rank most becomingly,” Thranduil says, his image flickering into blurry focus in the highly-polished brass just behind his right shoulder.

“No,” Bard says, turning away and running hands self-consciously up and down the open front of the embroidered coat he wore.  “ _You_ carry the garments of your rank most becomingly.  _I?_   I merely wear them like a child wears her mother’s dresses while playing make-believe.”

Thranduil reaches out and takes one of Bard’s errant quivering hands in both of his own, and lifts it slowly and inexorably towards his mouth, laying the softest of kisses upon Bard’s knuckles.

“And yet does that child not grow up?  Does that young girl not eventually begin to fill out those dresses, and wear them as well-- if not better-- than her mother before her?” 

Thranduil draws Bard’s hand away only insofar as it allows him to speak, and Bard cannot make the feet within his finely tooled leather boots move anymore than he can respond to Thranduil’s gentle reassurance, for his breath absolutely vanished from his body the minute the Elvenking’s lips had touched his skin. 

Sigrid, leaning against the doorframe, clears her throat.  It is unclear to both Thranduil and Bard just how long she has been standing there, but the lingering closeness of the two men is damning enough.

“Da, the ceremony is about to start.  The officiator wants you.” 

Bard looks up at his firstborn as though seeing her for the first time in his life. “I’m coming, darling.”  Somewhere along the line Thranduil has released his hand, but as he sweeps from the room in clothes which still make him feel like a pretend-king rather than a true monarch, Thranduil stays close to his side, the rustle of his silken garments a low-level source of affirmation.

Sigrid closes the door behind them and comments as off-handedly as she can, “I can wear mother’s clothing now, you know.”

“Oh?” Bard says, turning.  She falls into step by his side, the three of them barely fitting abreast in the hall. 

“Yes,” she says.  “I found some in an old chest, and I’ve had to darn the hems a bit, but they seem alright.” 

The smallest flick of Thranduil’s eyes to the side does not escape Bard.  It is better than a smile to the man, for it means the same thing _: I told you so._            

 

2.

“You wore them,” Bard says to Thranduil, after.  They are socializing at the requisite post-coronation party-- Dain had _insisted_ \-- and both nurse wineglasses of what Thranduil has assured him is a specially-procured and atypically fine Elvish vintage. 

“Of course,” Thranduil says, dipping his head in dignified acknowledgement.  The emeralds resting against his brocade-clad chest are heavy, gold-set things, utterly at odds with the delicate spindles and whorls of most Elvish jewelry Bard has had chance to observe.  But the sight of them adorning Thranduil’s neck draws Bard’s eye the way few sights have since the death of wife.  He drinks his fill of them more deeply than he drinks of his wine.     

“I did not expect you to.”  Bard steals a glance at Thranduil, sipping the aforementioned wine and anticipating his reaction, his heart and mind lightened by both the conclusion of the coronation ceremony and the deliciously sweet taste playing upon his lips.  _A fine vintage indeed_ , he thinks, and pays mind to thank Thranduil for it when the occasion arises.

“How could I have refused such an eloquently phrased request?”

Bard almost misses it-- for how often does the regal Elvenking make light of anything?-- but after a moment laughs low and whole-heartedly in the memory of his informal little post-script on the coronation note.  “Aye.  I have a very poor grasp of this kind of etiquette, you know.  Another way in which I shall make a poor king.” 

He means his remark to be off-hand and glib, but fears that the last part has spoken too much of the true feelings of his heart to come off as such.  Bard’s eyes flick uneasily to Thranduil, and this time meet the steady regard of his steel grey gaze head-on.  They are not amongst the main gathering of the crowd-- they have found their own pocket of solitude in one of the half-repaired crannies of the ancient ballroom, and the milling Dwarven, Elven, and Human dignitaries and assorted citizens spare very little attention for their corner.  This is perhaps why Thranduil deems it acceptable to step closer to Bard.

They breathe the same air in silence for the space of several heartbeats, during which Thranduil’s fingertips find Bard’s chin and the newly crowned King of Dale places a heavy hand just below where the Emeralds of Girion rest on Thranduil’s chest. 

“You will be the greatest king this benighted city has ever had or will ever have,” Thranduil says quietly, with such poise and assurance that Bard simply must, for the first time, truly and seriously entertain the idea of a reality in which he is King.  He closes his eyes, battling with the realization, and it is then that Thranduil chooses to seal his lips over Bard’s.

It is the briefest of touches, for Thranduil will risk no more, but Bard’s eyes snap open as soon as Thranduil begins to draw away, for he cannot bear to be parted from the sweetest thing that he has ever tasted. Bard surges forward and claims a second hard, fervent kiss from Thranduil, but the Elvenking pulls back after a moment, a hand at Bard’s waist, wary eyes roaming the room for onlookers and the smallest bend of his lips and the mirth dancing in his wide eyes the only things that betray the lack of real irritation he feels. 

Unfortunately for their clandestine moment, people are rarely as unobserved as they deceive themselves into believing.  In a room full of hundreds, there are myriad other events which vie for the attention of the guests, but the law of averages ensures that at least one stray gaze will catch that which the participants seek most fervently to conceal.  In this case, at least five guests see the two kings kiss that night-- from the races of man, elf, and dwarf-- and though four of these five people refuse to violate the privacy of their sovereigns for the sake of mere gossip fodder, the fifth is not so scrupulous.

By the end of the night it is all over the taverns of Dale, and by mid-morning on the following day it is everywhere else.  What had heretofore only been unsubstantiated rumor is suddenly tangible evidence-- “For surely,” the people of Dale and Mirkwood and Erebor say, “what else were those emeralds but a courting gift, given and accepted?”

 

1.

Three months pass.  Spring begins her slow and mercurial encroachment, and the Elvenking trades his crown of winterberries for one of woodland flowers.  The Men of Dale make ready the fields to sow their first harvest.  It is a time of rebirth and hope, and the closened ties between Mirkwood and Dale ensure that citizens of both kingdoms share in the sense of rejuvenation.  

From atop a white horse gifted to Bard by Thranduil after what is now known colloquially as the Battle of the Five armies, Bard surveys the first of such fields.

" _In order to be an effective ruler a king must see and be seen by his people,”_ Thranduil had said to him upon the occasion.  _“When you are mounted, that task is infinitely simpler.”_

_“I am no king,”_ Bard had reminded Thranduil, his words softly-spoken steel.

" _A commander, then,”_   Thranduil revised, waving a single hand dismissively. 

Thranduil, as ever, is astride a magnificent beast with antlers longer than his own height.  Bard had once inquired of its species, but its name was such a mouthful that he has now forgotten it.  A light breeze blows about them, lifting strands of the Elvenking’s hair as gently as if invisible fairies flitted about his head playing with it. 

Before long, Bard is paying the fields no heed, and is watching only Thranduil, observing the way the wispy hairs waft around the Elvenking’s fair, unchanging face.  Thranduil turns his head smoothly to meet Bard’s gaze, and the hard, thoughtful line of Bard’s mouth softens slightly.

Bard dismounts.  Thranduil follows suit.  They stand between their mounts, closer today than they had dared to stand yesterday, or the day before that, and keep up the charade of observing anything but each other for a few moments longer.

At last, Bard breathes, “Kiss me.”

“Not here.”

“Why not here?”

“This place is far too public. If we wish to keep the nature of our relationship concealed we must practice better discretion--”

“To hell with discretion.”  Bard snares Thranduil’s wrist and drags him behind the bulk of Thranduil’s mount.  It must be said that the Elvenking possesses the strength to easily break Bard’s grip, but he chooses not to do so, instead allowing his mouth to be claimed by Bard, warm and rough simultaneously.  Eventually he allows this sensation to lull himself so completely that he cradles Bard’s head in both his hands and leans fully into him, temporarily ignoring all else around him except for Bard…

…and the poorly-timed return of his son from Dale, presumably bearing more seed for the fields.  Thranduil sees him first, approaching from the west across a slightly hilly plain, and knows immediately that if he can discern his son, _his son can see him in return._  

Thranduil breaks away and gently turns Bard around with two hands on his waist, pointing with an arm over his shoulder at Legolas. 

Bard quickly and accurately assesses the situation as Thranduil lets his embrace fall away from Bard, turning around with the intent of remounting his horse and heading off his son. 

Once mounted, Bard must crane his head to meet Thranduil’s eyes and ask, “Is this going to be a problem?”

“No,” Thranduil replies.  “But it is going to require an explanation.” 

 

+1  
  
Poised by Bard’s side atop a balcony overlooking Dale’s largest square, Thranduil tilts his head just slightly, eyes downcast, focusing intently. 

“Do you hear something?” Bard asks, patiently waiting for the silence of the assembled crowd of Elves and Men so that he might announce that their first combined crop has successfully germinated. 

Something very subtle passes swiftly in front of Thranduil’s eyes, and Bard will swear up and down until the day he dies that it is shock.  It is not that the Elvenking is incapable of being shocked-- he is not, as lesser minds may perceive him to be, omnipotent, and therefore susceptible to such things-- but he takes great care to only ever portray the unshakable king his people see him as.

“Tell me what you hear.” 

After the span of several seconds, Thranduil turns to him, his expression of shock successfully banished, and says, “It seems all of our efforts towards discretion have been futile.”

Bard takes a step forward, leaning over the balcony as if being closer can somehow increase the accuracy of his own hearing.  His amusement slips away and leaves him with only a vague sense of confusion.  “Surely not,” he says, glancing behind himself at Thranduil.

“It appears so.”

“ _Surely_ not.”

“I cannot doubt the proof of my own ears.” 

Bard drags a hand briefly over his face before he remembers that people can see him doing so.  He steps back and rejoins Thranduil, raising a hand, waiting for the crowd to settle down.  Silence descends for a few moments. 

“People of--”

A lone voice rises out of the milling crowd.  “Begging yer pardon, King Bard, but we ain’t here for no speech!”

Bard is thrown for a moment by the faceless voice’s unexpected interruption.  “Then what be you here for?”

“Why, to obtain proof that you and the Elf-King are lovers, of course!”  Mumbles of assent ripple through the crowd.  “I’ve got three gold pieces riding on the answer!”

Bard does not quite trust himself to glance back at Thranduil, but he does so anyway, completely at a loss in the face of such a sudden and stark reversal of the heretofore assumed secrecy of their affection. 

“Shall I tell them, or shall you?” Thranduil asks.  Amusement dances in his eyes and quivers in his voice.  The bastard is absolutely enjoying this.  With a scoff that may or may not be a laugh, Bard steps up as close to the stone guardrail as he can, fumbles with his words for a moment, waves a vague hand around his head in a futile attempt at nonverbal communication, and then lets all his breath out in one short exhale.

“Yes,” he says simply.  “Yes, we are.” 

This truly sets the crowd into hysterics.

“Kiss ‘im already, then!”

“Yeah! Prove it!”

The cry is taken up as quickly as an echo reverberating through a cave. 

“Kiss him!”

“C’mon, it ain’t nothing we haven’t seen before.” 

“Just do it!”

“Kiss him like yer going off to battle!”

Bard looks to Thranduil, one eyebrow raised, torn between the crowd’s raucous demands and his own growing embarrassment.  “Think we should do it, then?”

“I do not see how a refusal could possibly aid our cause.” 

And so without much further ado-- for a delay will only incite the crowd to hysterics, as Thranduil reasons to himself-- he grabs Bard’s waist and buries fingers in soft, slightly graying hair, and then he bends Bard backwards and kisses him as the crowd had commanded: passionately, aggressively, and lustfully. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very sorry for the rampant fluff featured in this fic. It verges on being OOC, in my opinion, but I don't have the patience to mess with this anymore, so I leave it as is. 
> 
> Yes, I'm going to finish the coffeeshop!au. Yes, I'm going to update my SGU fic. (I say to myself, like a mantra, desperately hoping that the start of the semester doesn't totally sap all my free time away like it did last year.) Also, heads up, [ inkaijuwetrust](http://www.inkaijuwetrust.tumblr.com)\-- the letter-writing fic is next!


End file.
